


Intimate Forms of Address

by ariadnes_string



Category: A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine
Genre: Canon Queer Character, F/F, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21891541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: It was Shrja Torel who taught Mahit the pleasures of speaking in a different language.
Relationships: Mahit Dzmare/Shrja Torel
Comments: 10
Kudos: 23
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Intimate Forms of Address

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Monksandbones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monksandbones/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> A riff on a paragraph towards the beginning of the novel that describes Mahit reciting poetry to walls, and a brief description of her friendship with Shrja Torel on Lsel Station.

After the tumult of her time in the City, the approach to Lsel Station, her former and now not-quite home, seemed very slow. It gave Mahit plenty of time to consider what--and _who_ \--she would find there. 

****

It was Shrja Torel who taught Mahit the pleasures of speaking in a different language, Shrja who transformed Mahit from a budding pendant into someone who delighted in the nuance, the give-and-take, the rapid response, of speaking a foreign tongue. It was a kind of symmetry that the thing to brought them together broke them apart.

Lsel education focused on the accumulation of knowledge. In school, one strove to prove one’s aptitudes—in erudition, skill, talent. Almost paradoxically, students tried to mimic the depth of knowledge having an imago would bring in order to merit being brought into an imago line. And yet the young, lacking imagos, were regarded as morally and intellectually lightweight. True in all cultures, perhaps, but more pronounced in one where maturity brought with it literally generations of knowledge.

Before Shrja, therefore, Mahit’s focus had been on acquisition: stockpiling vocabulary, accumulating verb conjugations, stacking up lines of memorized poems. When Mahit was young, her family looked fondly on her accomplishments, seeing them as an adorable party trick. They cajoled her into reciting Teixcalaanli poems for politely admiring guests. As she grew, however, the sheer excess of her knowledge became somewhat embarrassing for her determinedly ordinary family, none of whom had any desire to look beyond Lsel Station. The invitations to perform at parties petered out, replaced by injunctions to “talk about something _normal_ , for once.” Deprived of an audience, she found herself reciting poems into mirrors, to the blank walls of the station. “An odd one, that Mahit,” those same guests would murmur. “What will become of her?”

It was in the midst of one of these ridiculous solitary performances that Shrja first found her. Mahit was reciting _The Plants and their Names_ to one of the more barren segments of the station architecture. She told herself she was studying for exams, but in truth she was simply enjoying the sensation of the perfect Teixcalaanli meter rolling off her tongue, as far away from the potential ridicule of other Stationers as she could manage. 

“You’ve got the accent wrong there,” a voice said behind her, and Mahit jumped. She whipped around, a blush rising to her cheeks, and saw a girl her own age. The gene pool on Lsel station was not deep, and there was not much difference between the girl and all the other girls in their year at school, except that this girl was slightly shorter and slightly fairer than most, her features more finely drawn. Yet Mahit recognized Shrja immediately. How could she not? Shrja was always at the head of their class, the one called upon to answer especially difficult questions, or perform for the school’s board of trustees. As the runner-up or alternate in all these accomplishments, Shrja loomed large in Mahit’s psyche, although they rarely spoke. In the face of Shrja’s unexpected attention now, Mahit closed her mouth and thought no words, especially not poetry, would ever cross her lips again.

Shrja had no time for her embarrassment. “Like this,” she said, and let the phrase in question slide through her delicate lips. Yes, even at that moment, Mahit was watching Shrja’s lips, rather than listening to the phrase. “Try again,” Shrja demanded. 

Mahit tore her eyes and thoughts away from those lips and did as she was told, though her own lips felt as thick as rubber. Of course she got it wrong, the cadence even more mangled than before.

“No.” Shrja shook her head sharply. She came closer to Mahit, lifted her head, and repeated the phrase more slowly, as you would to an idiot child. “Try again,” she repeated. 

Mahit wondered why her own achievement mattered to a star pupil like Shrja, but they were too tightly locked into something now for her to back away. She tried again, failed again. And then a third time. Shrja glared at her so intensely Mahit thought she might strike her. She had time to wonder whether she would fight back in such a situation, or run away, before Shrja, to her surprise, let out a peal of laughter.

“Oh never mind," she said, "It’s a stupid poem, anyway. Who writes a thousand-line poem about different kinds of daisies?”

Shocked and titillated by such criticism of imperial verse, which was the only verse taught in Lsel schools, Mahit, too, giggled. Certainly not Stationers, that’s who—who had no interest in plant life that wasn’t digestible. The poem was pretty dull, she admitted, perhaps even silly.

The moment of shared, somewhat subversive, laughter seemed to decide something between them. In unspoken agreement, they sat down with their backs against the barren wall, knees pulled up, abandoned poetry and started gossiping about the other students in their year instead. Shrja dug some lint-covered candies out of the pocket of her and offered one to Mahit, who took it gratefully, fuzz and all. As they sucked the candies, Shrja’s ridicule of Teixcalaan abruptly reversed itself. 

“Imagine being named after a flower,” she asked wistfully. “Imagine living surrounded by flowers. Imagine living surrounded by other other people named after flowers. What must life in the City be like?”

Did Shrja kiss her then, or was that later? Mahit could never remember, so quickly did they go from distant rivals to fervent lovers.

Of course, their lovemaking retained more than an element of competition. Their trysts, carried out in Mahit’s narrow bedroom, while her parents were at work and her brother at low-gravity wrestling practice, were represented to all three as study sessions. And in some respects they were. 

“Let’s make a vow,” Shrja said, “Let’s only speak Teixcalaanli to each other.”

Excited by the prospect—for her, the imperial language had always given an erotic sheen to all it touched—Mahit agreed.

And so their time together became a combination of language training, sexual experimentation, and role-playing. Teixcalaanli had so many forms of address, but they worked their way through all of them, from formal to intimate, playing at court intrigue, business dealings, and, of course, poetry competitions. It dizzied Mahit. Her solitary study of the language had never revealed to her the way words shaped identity, or, rather, the way words exchanged with someone else shaped the identities of both. She reveled in it, and found in herself not only an acute perception of nuance, but also a certain fluidity of persona. In their games, she enjoyed playing both losers and winners, both supplicants and emperors, both scholar and fools. She loved toying with a situation, improvising, and gradually shaping it to her desire (her desire was always to get Shrja naked, it must be said, and in this Shrja was a willing accomplice). She became expert at it. Sometimes Shrja didn’t even notice that by the end they were playing by Mahit’s rules. It was the most fun Mahit had ever had. At the time, and for a long time afterwards, she believed that she loved Shrja; but, in retrospect, perhaps what she really loved was the game.

Retrospect also told Mahit—although it was also possible she knew at the time and didn’t want to believe it—that what Shrja loved was winning. She hated taking on subordinate roles, and sulked when it as her turn to play the loser. She was as quick with ridicule in Teixcalaanli as Mahit, but hated, though she was loath to admit it, the winding rituals of flattery that were such a part of imperial culture. Mahit, to her surprise, loved them.

“You’re too imperial for the empire,” Mahit told her once. They had finished their language games for the afternoon, and Mahit said it with her mouth half full of Shrja’s nipple. She meant is as a compliment, or perhaps a joke. But Shrja, in one of her quicksilver moods, rolled out of bed and started putting on her clothes.

Of course, by then, rumors were already circulating that the latest round of aptitude tests were to choose a new ambassador to the City. Mahit assumed they were both too young for such an honor, such an opportunity. Shrja, perhaps, had already guessed the truth.

It was the last time they spoke. Mahit regretted it then, and for a long time after. They were more different than they'd realized, but she'd always be indebted to Shrja for revealing things about herself she didn't know. Her aptitudes, Lsel Station governance called them. But Mahit knew by then the malleability of self, and the power of poetry to shape it.

****

Who was she now, Mahit wondered as the transport neared Lsel Station. What languages would she learn next? 


End file.
